


String Theory

by proxydialogue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Purgatory, Season/Series 08, drablblble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 19:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For four years there have been gaps in his dreams...</p>
            </blockquote>





	String Theory

>   
>    
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> “You cut up a thing that’s alive and beautiful to find out how it’s alive and why it’s beautiful, and before you know it, it’s neither of those things, and you’re standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.”
> 
> -Clive Barker

  


  


For four years there have been gaps in his dreams. Since he first dozed off on the bus on the way from that hole in the ground to Bobby’s, until the night before his kamikaze run on Dick Roman. He would go to sleep and the blood would be there, the old nightmares and the new, the white rain and the black snow, and underneath all of it a single heartbeat’s weight of void. Not even silence. Not even noise. Just a gap; a blink.

He didn’t sleep in purgatory. There was no need. And no time.

But Dean Winchester lives again and he dreams again too. And the gaps are filling in.

_They begin with silver light and singing. With ice-cold wind and the smell of marble. Then careful warmth at his fingertips and his palms, soaking slowly into his skin and bones. For weeks that is what he dreams. The feeling of impossible safety. As he hasn’t felt since—_

He wakes up comforted and rested.

More details come with time. The more air he breathes. The more smiles he gives out to grieving strangers and pretty waitresses. The more laundry he racks up.

Dean starts doing things he hasn’t done since he was really, very small. He falls asleep waiting for Sam to come home.  He falls asleep reading the newspaper. Or watching TV. Whenever he’s tired he just lies down and closes his eyes and dreams those dreams. 

_The walls are close. The ceiling is strong. His hands are busy. The warmth that began at his hands is constant now and covers him. The silver light is interrupted by gentle cuts of perfect blue. Dean is counting. He is somewhere in the hundred thousands. He is safe and secure and another voice is counting with him. Dean is smiling and saying softly, in between numbers: “Very good. You’re doing good. Just hang in there.”_

Outside the dreams, Sam is starting to drift away from him. Dean keeps pretending that he doesn’t believe it but Sam’s eyes are looking over Dean’s shoulders more than they used too instead of at his face. Sam is reading those boring books about people who have been dead a hundred years again. And Dean can already feel the extra weight in his cellphone, racking up the voicemails as they start missing each other’s calls. He knows it’s almost time to let go.

He takes it one day at a time.

He takes it one night at a time.

_“Come with me,” says the voice he knows and does not know._

_“Stay with me,” he replies. He is meant to be here. But this new creature is meant to be with him. It has already been missing for too long and Dean has been waiting. This bright presence, this sharp intruder; it belongs to Dean. He can already hear how his name will sound cried out from the bottom of such a life._

_Beautiful. Many things in this place are beautiful but the creature is art._

The dream is familiar. Like it’s always been there. For four years, just hidden away in some corner of Dean’s mind but kept dark from him by a friendly hand.

_“Stay,” Dean says again. He wonders what’s inside? This burning, freezing, perfection must have a heart or it would not beat the way it does. Dean gets himself a little bit closer. The creature looks him up and down; appraising, stern._

_“If you come,” it counters, tipping its head and reading its next words from Dean’s eyes.  “I will let you dig out the screw that makes me tic. If you agree to leave with me, you may have whatever you find at my center."_

_Dean laughs._

_“That’s a high price to pay, baby-face,” he says._

_“You are worth more.”_

Dean has been alive for three months when he realizes what the dream is. It’s that phrase, that utterly idiotic insistence of his worth that trips him into the obvious answer. 

Sam comes back to the motel an hour earlier than he was supposed to and catches Dean sitting on the edge of the bed crying. Not weeping or tearing up or hanging his head and clenching his fist like a man. But crying. Fucking sobbing his eyes out the same way he did when his mom died, when his dad died, and when Sam died. Just totally, completely losing his shit.

He knows whose hand is missing. Who used to keep the dream away.

_He kneels down, lays the knife at the base of the stained bone rack and slips his arm around the waist of the angel. A burning palm finds his shoulder for purchase as he helps the thing to its feet. Silver droplets and milky tears drop from the angel’s face to the ground. In the bloody mess, the puddle of blues and whites, is a golden, broken strand. Dean thinks it might be a harp string. Or a ligament. Or a single, living vein._

_“What’s your name?” Dean asks. He doesn’t even recognize his own voice through the white noise of the angel’s apologies and grateful thanks in his ear._

_“Castiel,” the angel whispers and hauls itself upright to stand trembling and ruined and proud. “Will you leave with me now?”_

_“Yeah,” says Dean. “Lead the way.”_

_They walk out of Hell together._

**Author's Note:**

> Picture found via a lazy google search, but ultimately comes from here: http://artissima.deviantart.com/art/String-Theory-II-64583873


End file.
